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“The Odyssey” has crossed $1 billion in global ticket sales at a mind-boggling pace.
After just three weeks of release, Christopher Nolan’s epic, starring Matt Damon as the Greek king Odysseus, has generated $429.65
million domestically and $578.8 million internationally for a grand total of $1.008 billion. It’s the director’s first movie since 2012’s “The Dark Knight Rises” to clear the coveted box office milestone. In a matter of days, “The Odyssey” will become Nolan’s highest-grossing release of all time, eclipsing the long-held records of “The Dark Knight Rises” ($1.08 billion) and 2009’s “The Dark Knight” ($1.008 billion). It’s a remarkable accomplishment — especially for an adult-skewing drama that’s nearly three hours long and adapted from a nearly 3,000-year-old poem — solidifying Nolan as the most bankable filmmaker of his generation.
Imax has contributed a massive $257 million in ticket sales, and “The Odyssey” will rank as the company’s highest-grossing release of all time by the end of the weekend.
“The Odyssey” joined the billion-dollar club before opening in China, the world’s second-biggest moviegoing market. The country is rolling out the red-carpet treatment for the film,which is expected to land on nearly 800 Imax screens and across thousands of standard auditoriums on Aug. 14.
With glowing word-of-mouth and outsized interest in premium large formats, “The Odyssey” will remain a big-screen draw through the summer and into the fall. Hollywood is banking on “The Odyssey” and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” to boost domestic ticket sales above $4 billion for only the second time since COVID. The first time the North American box office hit the $4 billion mark was 2023, when Nolan’s prior film, the Oscar-winning smash “Oppenheimer” ($975 million) and Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” galvanized the masses.
“The Odyssey” is the fifth movie of 2026 to earn $1 billion, following “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” ($1.18 billion and counting), “Toy Story 5″ ($1.067 billion), “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” ($1.001 billion) and “Michael” ($1.001 billion). At the midway point, this year has already produced the most billion-dollar blockbusters since the pandemic shook up the movie theater industry. A record nine movies crossed the milestone in 2019. But since then, no year has had more than three films that reached the billion-dollar mark.
